


Tied to the Tail

by Owlship



Series: Riding the SkyTrain [5]
Category: Transformers: Cyberverse
Genre: Body Horror, Developing Relationship, F/M, Implied Dead End/Perceptor, Mildly Dubious Consent, Other, Seeker Trines, Size Difference, Size Kink, Sticky Sexual Interfacing, a shocking lack of pranks, emotionally stunted alien robots
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-04
Updated: 2020-10-04
Packaged: 2021-03-07 17:48:18
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,461
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26801677
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Owlship/pseuds/Owlship
Summary: "I'm off-duty today," Skywarp tries instead, because blunt had worked well before, "If you're free, wanna clang?"He swings his head around to look at her, and then his optics focus on a point beyond her for a split astrocycle. "Sure you're not already busy?" he says.
Relationships: Astrotrain/Skywarp (Transformers), Skywarp/Starscream/Thundercracker (Transformers), Skywarp/Thundercracker (Transformers)
Series: Riding the SkyTrain [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1926703
Comments: 5
Kudos: 30





	Tied to the Tail

**Author's Note:**

> Dubious Consent tag is because there's a miscommunication during sex which precedes Skywarp having a lil bit of a breakdown, but the sex itself isn't actually the problem. If that makes sense.
> 
> Also, I finally managed to get the trine all in the same room! :)

The only reason she doesn't throw Thundercracker to the ground and clang him right then and there in front of the spacebridge, audience be damned, is because Soundwave physically separates them with vicious yanks on their wings.

"Your behavior is unacceptable," he says, ominous music that sounds like the lead-up to one of his sonic attacks playing from his speakers.

Thundercracker shuffles his pedes and looks mortified, but Skywarp just huffs in annoyance, flicking her ailerons so hard she almost sprains something. "I can't even greet my own trinemate?" she asks, a whine creeping into her vocalizer.

Soundwave just stares at her flatly, which is something of a mood-killer anyway.

"Fine, whatever," she says, because he's still her superior officer and she _supposes_ Megatron might not be happy to hear that she blew off her assignment for a public reunion frag. Even if she really, really just wants to show Thundercracker how much she's missed him.

"I could use a shower, anyway," Thundercracker says, a bit awkwardly. "They use _water_ on Earth for washing."

Skywarp grimaces, because H2O is one of the leading causes of rust, and because she really doesn't want to know what sort of organic grime is still clinging to him. "You can stay in my quarters," she tells him, and sends him the location. "I'll join you soon as my shift is over."

Then she kisses him in goodbye, until Soundwave pointedly raises his music enough to rattle at her sensors and she has to let Thundercracker go or start suffering damage. Killjoy.

The very astrocycle her duties are over, Skywarp teleports straight into her berthroom. A freshly-washed and shiny Thundercracker is arranging some nick-knacks he must have brought with him from planet Dirt on her shelving unit, random bits of organic junk.

But he turns to her instantly when she appears, just as desperate for her as she is for him. The interfacing is quick and dirty, then slow and drawn-out, then frantic again because she can't help it, her spark is singing with the pleasure of having half her trine with her again.

In the sticky aftermath Thundercracker lays over her, deceptively heavy frame crushing her down against the berth. She squirms a little just to feel how pinned she is. She loves being weighed down by him, all the extra tonnage of his reinforced chassis pressing against hers, grounding her when she feels she might otherwise fly from her very frame. The only thing better is having Starscream trapped underneath the both of them, too immobile to put up a fight like he otherwise would just because he's a contrary aft.

⁂ _I missed you_ ⁂ Skywarp sends through their bond, lips silent against the side of his helm.

He hums, arms tightening their hold. ⁂ _Love you_ ⁂

She ex-vents a contented sigh.

Unfortunately, she can't spend _all_ her time in her berth with Thundercracker. For one thing, he pleads exhaustion eventually, and for another, she does have pesky things called responsibilities to deal with.

Skywarp doesn't get to see a lot of her pranks and booby traps actually go off. Plenty are found and deactivated (Soundwave is _such_ a buzzkill) but even the ones that aren't, usually get sprung when she isn't around. Which is generally for the best- she does _not_ want to deal with angry Stunticons right after they realize it was she who rigged up triplines all over their favorite racing course, or angry Decepticons in general after the nitroglycerin in the energon dispenser fiasco, or... really most reactions, actually.

She was kind of expecting to hear back from Astrotrain, though. She knows he got hit because she saw orange spattered all over him the cycle after she set things up, clashing horribly with his purple, but he doesn't say anything to her about it, and there isn't any sign of retaliation.

She even makes a point of drifting through the hangar on her way out a couple of times, but he always seems to be absent.

It's fine, they're all busy lately as this ceasefire drags on... But it rankles her. She's not as desperate for attention as Starscream but she doesn't like to feel as if she's being ignored, and that's what this is beginning to feel like.

::You around later?:: Skywarp sends him. He doesn't reply, and after a while she adds, ::I've got a vid you might like. Menasor mis-transforming, Dead End totally eats slag::

She kind of regrets giving him that program to mute his comm since now she doesn't even know if he's ignoring her specifically, or just everyone.

It just _annoys_ her. Knowing that he could be paying attention to her but isn't. She rigs up a particularly noxious stinkbomb because surely _that_ will get a reaction, but when she goes to the hangar to hide it, his sad little (big) berth is nowhere to be found, the nook he was crammed into cleared out.

If it wasn't for the occasional glimpses of him around base Skywarp keeps getting, she'd almost start wondering if he was deactivated or stationed elsewhere.

She still plants the stinkbomb for someone to find, of course.

::Commander Skywarp:: one of her seekers sends over comms, and she figures it's going to be something boring. A couple of cycles ago, one of the newer trines had gotten all flustered because there was a drizzle of acid rain which wasn't predicted, and they had promptly forgotten how to handle themselves around it.

::Report:: she says, most of her processor focused on deciding whether that chunk of raw magnesium she can see is worth bringing back to base. It'll be a hassle to get it prepared as an incendiary by herself, but if no one knows she has it, they can't stop her from using it.

::We've got an Autobot:: the seeker says. She thinks their designation is something-Wing, maybe? ::Permission to deactivate?::

Well, Skywarp thinks, _that's_ interesting. She queries for their location instead and warps over, because if anyone is deactivating an Autobot today it's going to be her.

"Oh," she says with a flat lack of enthusiasm, "It's you." The scientist with the blown optics- and really? None of the Autobot medics have done anything about that, yet?

"Skywarp," he says in reply, tipping his helm forward slightly in greeting. She's not surprised that he knows her designation- she's not exactly a low-profile figure- though it's a bit unnerving to be identified when he can't even see her.

"What are you doing on Decepticon territory?" she demands, flipping into her transformation sequence as she lands rather than blasting him from the sky, because it's not like he's a threat.

::Commander?:: Something-Wing asks from where they're circling up above.

::Stand down:: she tells them, ::I've got it from here::

"I was exploring a cave system," he says, blandly enough that she's immediately suspicious. "I didn't anticipate surfacing here."

There _is_ what looks like an opening of some sort in the hills a short distance away, metal crumbling away into darkness at the edges. He's looking kind of scuffed up, too, dust settling on his armor and scrapes on his hands. "You were exploring a cave, totally blind?" she says.

"If I can't see, does it matter whether my surroundings are dark or not?" he retorts.

Skywarp is already annoyed by him, and opens a comm-link to Soundwave without addressing him further. ::I've got an Autobot in custody, are we ransoming or deactivating?::

It's not Soundwave who answers her, though, but Shadow Striker's distinctly nasty tone. ::Which one?::

::Why are you on Soundwave's frequency?:: Skywarp shoots back, confused. Shadow Striker isn't even part of the command staff, though she's _probably_ made senior officer at some point in the last millennia.

::He's busy, I'm handling his station:: she says, and she doesn't sound happy about it- she never sounds happy- but there's a sort of pride, like she actually wants to do gruntwork for Soundwave. Aft-kisser. ::Which Autobot is it?::

It's entirely possible that Shadow Striker is telling the truth, and for whatever reason is managing Soundwave's public comm for him. But like pit does Skywarp actually want to work with her- she's still not over being stabbed, thanks very much.

She cuts the connection and comms Megatron, instead. ::Sir, what are your orders for Autobot intruders?::

She watches the Autobot, who shows no signs of being afraid despite the four seekers circled around him. She remembers being camped out in Iaconus, still rattled from being pulled out of that awful parade sim and thrust into an alien invasion instead, and seeing him map out their odds of survival. He hadn't seemed afraid then, either.

Megatron doesn't answer her back, and Skywarp makes a decision. "You get one free trip out of here," she says.

The Autobot tilts his helm to the side slightly, like he's getting a better angle to examine her- except his optics are still a blown-out mess, so it's not as if he can really see her at all. "Thank you," he says in an even, almost bored tone. "Unfortunately, the cave system collapsed behind me as I was exploring. I can no longer leave through that route."

She flicks her ailerons because of _course_. If he just left the way he came, she could report that he made a run for it and somehow slipped away, which is a much different thing from deliberately letting him go free.

To the trine still circling up above she comms, ::On my mark, prepare to bomb the cave's entrance::

Skywarp grabs the Autobot's arm, but instead of warping directly away, she starts marching him towards the cave.

He hesitates slightly at the uneven surface of the entrance, the scope on his shoulder whirring quietly as it probes the darkness. When they're just out of sight she tells the seekers to start firing after a count of three, and teleports herself and the Autobot over the Line.

It's a rougher journey than she'd like, even though it's not very far and she only has one passenger. She hasn't been getting much rest at night now that Thundercracker is in her berth again.

"Fascinating," he says when they rematerialize, a thread of actual interest in his voice. "I've never traveled that way before."

"Well, duh," Skywarp says. No one else can do what she can do, and while she warps Autobots in battle when the situation calls for it- there is _nothing_ quite like the shock on a ground-pounder's faceplate when they realize they're about to free-fall a couple miles before being reunited with their beloved dirt- this one isn't a frontline fighter. She's pretty sure he still transforms into some kind of lab equipment rather than anything actually useful.

"If you are able to bring us to Maccadam's, I can repay you for the journey," he says.

"Repay me by trapping me in a room of Autoboobs? No thanks," she says.

"I was thinking energon," the Autoboob in front of her says with the slightest tinge of amusement. "Fighting is not allowed in the Oil House, even against Decepticons."

Skywarp gives him a good hard look while she weighs her options. Obviously she shouldn't, for several very good reasons, but... But there's one particular mix of flavorings she's never been able to get other than at Maccadam's, and even if the supply is long gone there might be a recipe she can have. She'd do a lot of things for that recipe.

"What were you really doing over the Line?" she asks, because it's one thing to skive off for a drink with enemies on a random cycle, and definitely another when there's some sort of surprise attack being set up.

The Autobot smiles faintly. "Merely visiting a- friend." His vocalizer hitches slightly over the word, and she doesn't know if it's because he meant to say something like 'undercover agent' or if it's one of those 'we haven't discussed our _relationship_ yet' type glitches.

Ew, who would have low enough self-esteem to frag an _Autobot_? Especially more than once. Sure, okay, anyone would roll over for a chance at the Prime, and she would absolutely hate-clang Windblade if Starscream wouldn't deactivate her for it, but this weakling Autobot scientist is hardly of the same caliber. Even if she supposes he _had_ done them all a favor with the whole Quintesson sim-prison thing.

Not wanting to dwell on the thought anymore, she teleports them to Maccadam's- where of course the place is crawling with Autobots.

Immediately she hears an outcry, and feels the threat of various weapons aimed her way, and this was _so_ a trap, even as she powers up her null rays she knows she's going to get her wings shot off-

"Stand down, everyone," the scientist Autobot says before she can either reflexively teleport back away or start shooting at random, his voice barely raised. "She is a guest." To emphasize his point, he puts a hand on one of her raised null rays and presses down, a clear cue for her to lower her weapons.

"Uh, Perceptor?" the Autobot behind the counter asks, a nondescript grounder she doesn't recognize. "You know that's a Decepticon, right?"

"I'm aware," the scientist says drily, and she figures that at least now she'll know his designation before she's deactivated.

"Well, I'm sure we all remember the golden rule of Maccadam's Old Oil House," a jovial, booming sort of voice says, and Skywarp feels her wings droop even before she glances over because that's clearly Grimlock. Not only is he super annoying, he can totally tear her to shreds. Great. "No fighting."

The Autobots in the bar around her- she doesn't recognize any of them aside from Grimlock, so she has no idea what to expect about their skills- grumble, but she sees most of them put away their weapons and return to their various tables.

Perceptor walks around the counter of the bar and shoos the Autobot who had been there away. 

"I promised you energon," he says, and grabs a flagon from under the counter. Apparently it hadn't been a fluke that he was there when she warped in to get Soundwave and Dead End that one time. She wonders how often he serves Decepticons, and the pun makes her relax enough to fully power down her null rays.

Skywarp pulls herself up and saunters to the stools in front of the counter, wings high and proud. Take that, Autobots, she thinks a bit nonsensically, there's a Decepticon in your precious Oil House and you can't do anything about it.

"What brings you to our neck of the crystal forest?" Grimlock asks her, his bulky frame dropping down onto a seat next to the one she picks. He's smiling like this is one of his overblown parties, but above that his optics are suspicious.

She ignores him and addresses Perceptor. "Maccadam used to have a specific flavor mix," she says, "Did any of his supplies make it?"

Perceptor sets down the flagon, now full of sparkling energon. "Some of them," he says. "Which one are you looking for?"

"I don't know all the ingredients or what he called it," Skywarp says, and flicks her wings slightly to dismiss the embarrassment trying to creep up on her for such a vague request. Maccadam had just added some to her energon the first time she visited, and every time since, like he somehow _knew_ how much she would love it. "But the main components were platinum, beryllium, and promethium."

"Expensive taste," Grimlock says as Perceptor disappears through an unmarked doorway.

She imagines him stuck mid-transformation, flailing his tiny useless mechanimal arms, and smirks without saying anything. When it was Maccadam serving her, the cost hadn't mattered- he charged a pittance, no more than any of the more common flavorings available. It was only afterwards, trying to figure out the exact combination so she could have a little taste of comfort while the reality of war settled into her processor, that she became aware how dear some of the elements were.

"So," Grimlock says, clearly not ready to give up yet, "Why _did_ you teleport in here with Perceptor? Don't tell me you were just in the neighborhood and felt thirsty."

Skywarp cuts her optics to him, but his posture is still relaxed, like they're friends having a chat. "I found him on _our_ side of the fence," she says, because there's really no better way to spin this than the truth. "Out of the goodness of my spark I brought him back home, and he offered me a drink in thanks. You really shouldn't let him wander off all alone, you know. Such terrible things can happen to those who don't see danger coming."

He tenses, clearly sensing the underlying threat in her words. But what he says is only, "Ah yes, I've always heard _so much_ about your kind spark."

She narrows her gaze into a glare. It would be Starscream-levels of blockheaded to get into a scrap with Grimlock of all Autobots, but she just might be tempted. Ceasefire be damned.

"Do these glyphs mean anything to you?" Perceptor's voice cuts through her thoughts of beating Grimlock's helm in with his own tail, and she turns to him.

There's a metal storage box in his hands, a series of glyphs carved into the front. "That's Vosian," Skywarp says before she can stop herself, so surprised to see her native language in this day and age.

"I thought it might be," he says, and sets the box down on the counter.

She's barely paying attention, though, because it's not just Vosian on the box- it's _her designation_ , rendered in its most formal sequence instead of the common simplified form she uses for everyday usage. How in the world had Maccadam known the exact spelling? And _why_ had he labeled this mix with her designation, did he name it after her or something?

Perceptor mixes a scoopful into the flagon of energon, and when he pushes it over she picks up the drink like she's running an autopilot. It tastes exactly the way she remembers, the sweet-and-sour tang of the rich metals, the spice from minerals she could never tell apart well enough to mix on her own.

The energon itself is nice enough, distilled to give a smooth buzz but not nearly a high enough grade to overcharge her anytime soon. But it's only when it's combined with that specific flavoring that it fulfills a craving she hadn't even known she was carrying around all these stellar cycles.

She drains the flagon too quickly despite her intention to savor it, leaving her with just the aftertaste lingering on her glossa. Would it be weird to lick the glass clean? Probably, but she's tempted anyway.

Skywarp looks up from the empty flagon and realizes that both Autobots are still watching her- or, well, Grimlock is watching, Perceptor is doing whatever it is he does without working optics.

She licks her lips. "Thanks for the drink."

And teleports before she can make more of a fool of herself.

She's pretty sure Megatron knows she let Perceptor go, and also pretty sure that he's going to blow out her processor for it. (Not her spark- her teleportation is too valuable, they'll just take the opportunity to 'start over' with a blank processor- so she _supposes_ that's not as bad as it could be?)

He summons her to the command room, mismatched optics boring into her.

Scrap, he totally knows.

"Lord Megatron, Sir," Skywarp says, wondering if a bow is too much. What would Screamer do? Wait, no, he'd probably brag about letting the Autobot go and then try to shoot Megatron's faceplate, all while mocking him for his leadership skills. And since she is definitely _not_ Starscream, attempting anything similar will see her deactivated before she can even blink.

"Skywarp," he says at last. "Shrapnel has informed me his team requires raw energon crystals."

She blinks, holding herself otherwise perfectly still so the surprise doesn't show. Who needs what? This isn't about her giving an Autobot a ride home and then staying for a round of drinks instead of offlining him?

The mech she assumes is Shrapnel steps a little further into the murky light Megatron favors nowadays, and ew, he's one of the Insecticons. She's never really understood the appeal of mechanimal forms anyway, but did they have to pick such creepy-crawly ones?

"Sir?" she says after an astrocycle when there's no further explanation.

Megatron looms down over her, suddenly far too close in her personal space. She almost imagines she can feel the radiation from the Matrix in his chest, her own spark giving a weird judder as her core energon pump spasms.

"You are a seeker, are you not?" he says, voice a low growl. "Seek some for them."

Skywarp can't look away from his faceplate, even though she really wants to. It's true that the term 'seeker' comes from her frametype's (supposed) ability to find energon in its various states more effectively than others, but that's the sort of thing nobot has actually _done_ since like, before Vos was founded. They have refineries to handle their energon supply now, they don't need to scavenge the wastes like barbarians.

"Of course," she says, because whether it makes sense or not, you don't refuse an order from Megatron without good reason.

He keeps staring at her for a long moment, long enough for her to wonder if she's supposed to say something else or maybe he's waiting for her to pull an energon crystal from her subspace as if she was already prepared for this request. Then he draws himself back, breaking the intensity of his focus on her, and she ex-vents from the sheer relief of it.

She's entering the mess with Thundercracker when she finally sees Astrotrain someplace he can't slip away easily, his attention utterly focused on the energon dispenser he's hunched in front of. He's using the larger cubes she found for him, Skywarp notes with a flash of satisfaction.

"Hey, Astrotrain," she calls out.

She doesn't have any sort of plan, so when he turns his head to regard her she just smiles, her wings giving a little flutter.

Astrotrain grunts, and turns back to his energon.

Her smile falters. Is he mad at her? All she did was saw through the legs of his berth, he couldn't possibly have gotten any damage from that.

"Get us some seats?" she says to Thundercracker. "I'll just be a minute."

He mutters something, but she can't hear what so it's probably not important. Astrotrain isn't quite finished filling his cube when she walks up to him, forcing an air of casualness into her movements.

"Did you see Hook about you teleportation drive?" she asks, because she figures that's a neutral topic. They both teleport, albeit in very different ways, it's just shop talk. "I can't imagine it's good to have it hooked up the way it is long-term."

He ex-vents, forceful enough to disturb the surface of his energon cube. "No," he says.

Skywarp nods, because she completely understands not wanting Hook to poke around your systems. "I'm off-duty today," she tries instead, because blunt had worked well before, "If you're free, wanna clang?"

He swings his head around to look at her, and then his optics focus on a point beyond her for a split astrocycle. "Sure you're not already busy?" he says.

She twists around to follow where his line of gaze had gone, but only sees Thundercracker chatting with the Rainmakers. She turns back to face Astrotrain again and says, "No?"

He regards her for a moment, big and intense even when he's awkwardly cramped into this small space, and she has a burst of insight because- he isn't a seeker. She forgets, sometimes, just how clueless other frametypes can be.

"If you mean Thundercracker," she says, watching his faceplate to see if her guess is correct. "It's fine, he doesn't care if we frag. Or... I could ask him to join, if you wanted?"

Astrotrain's expression glitches a little at her offer, but she can't tell if it's a good or bad thing. He does seem to relax slightly, though, frame not quite such a rigid block. "I'm busy the next few cycles," he says, and it's still a rejection but the flatness is gone from his vocalizer, replaced with a sort of cautious regret.

Skywarp smiles in victory for figuring out the problem. It wasn't _her_ , it was Thundercracker that was making him pull back, and she can work with that. "Comm me when you're free," she says, and reaches out to trace the tip of a digit along one of the seams in his thigh, temptingly close with the way he's all folded up.

He gives her a smile back, small, but enough to lift some of the gloom out of his optics.

She's so pleased with herself for securing Astrotrain's attention again, that she completely forgets to get cubes of energon and slides empty-handed into the seat Thundercracker set aside for her.

He pointedly resets his vocalizer. "Guess I'll get the fuel then," he says.

"Oh," Skywarp says, wings dropping low in a flicker of embarrassment. "Sorry."

He just rolls his optics downwards, as if appealing to Primus, and then says, "Just don't let him total you."

"Hey!" she says, pretending to be offended. "We've fragged a bunch and he's barely even left dents."

"A bunch?" Thundercracker says, optical ridge raised. "You don't usually strike the same mecha twice in a century, and I haven't been gone _that_ long."

Skywarp feels a rush of embarrassment so strong she very nearly warps out of the mess rather than deal with it. He can _never_ know that Astrotrain's only been on the planet for less than a stellar cycle, she'd never hear the end of it. "I mean," she says weakly, "It wasn't _that_ often?"

He doesn't look as if he believes her, a gleam in his optics like he wants to start prying, frame leaning ever so slightly in towards her.

"Be right back with our energon!" she says, jumping to her pedes before he can open his mouth and start saying whatever horrible things he wants to say. Because it's true, she usually _doesn't_ interface with the same mecha in a row like this, and she's not entirely sure why things are different with Astrotrain but she definitely doesn't want to discuss the possibilities.

Her berthroom feels fuller with Thundercracker in it, tidying up her messes and arguing about which images to display, wrapping around each other's frames at night and fighting for the covers. But it's still obvious that something is missing, that the berth is too large, that there are shelves sitting unused.

"Skywarp," he says at last, his voice quiet. "Where's Starscream?"

She knows what it had looked like: Starscream, reformatted by the Quintessons into what they call a Judge, huge and dangerous and vindictive. Skywarp had looked at his sharp faceplate writ larger than life, at the sneer, the viciousness in his optics, and had been so stunned she couldn't do anything. Couldn't accept it.

She had read all those reports, of course, the ones that said Megatron had very nearly deactivated Starscream- had assumed him to be offline, a broken husk left on an alien planet- and that Screamer had only partially recovered. She read Thundercracker's rambling letters, expressing his hopes and then fears as Starscream ordered his seekers (still his, always his, regardless of what rank Megatron strips from him- Megatron never understood that, the loyalty of seekers to the mech who would have one cycle been Winglord had the war not destroyed Vos) on increasingly dangerous and strange missions.

Starscream himself sent her a message during this time, a horrible ode to the Allspark and Vector Sigma and what he was going to do with them, what he would do with her and Thundercracker flanking his wings where they belonged. Skywarp had tried to delete it, disturbed down to her laser core by his apparent break from reality, but her processor keeps reconstructing it from fragments to torment her during defrag cycles.

She knew that Starscream had offlined most of the seekers on that alien planet with him, and that Thundercracker wasn't spared. He'd have been deactivated along with the rest if only his plating was a little easier to crack into, if they hadn't built him sturdy enough to withstand being ground zero of the sonic waves his spark generates.

She knew that Starscream had lied when he sent her that letter promising her and Thundercracker glory and power at his side, because he didn't even hesitate when he reached out to destroy his own trinemate, didn't even stop to see if he was fully offline before discarding him like a broken toy.

And then Starscream disappeared, and she only knew he continued to function because the trine bond was intact between them. She hadn't tried to reach out to him, had let the bond sit silent in her chest, unsure how to react to any of it.

So when he returned, in new and more horrible form than anything she could imagine, Skywarp hadn't known what to think. She had sent pulse after pulse at him through the trine bond, ⁂ _What's going on where are you Starscream what are you **doing**_ ⁂ but received nothing in response, not even the faintest echo, just the baseline hum of the quantum entanglement between them.

When he fell, she was one of the few to ignore Megatron and Optimus Prime coming to terms and instead flew straight to the smoldering pile of slag they'd destroyed, barely recognizable. What she found was... The Judge was, unmistakably, deactivated. Its body was collapsed, burning from the inside so hot that molten metal drained out like rivers of spilled energon, not a single circuit or organic unit left functional.

But inside her chest, despite the evidence in front of her optics that Starscream should be extinguished and the bond between them dissolved, her spark continued to hum and resonate with her unbroken trine.

And so she had started to search.

She doesn't want to answer Thundercracker's question. He has every right to know, of course, but she doesn't know how he'll react- either to Starscream, or to her for her part in this.

"He wasn't himself," she says, voice weak to her own audials. It's no excuse, they both know it. Starscream has always looked out for himself first, no price too great for him to pay if it gets him closer to his goals.

Thundercracker moves himself away from her, and she shivers at the loss of his heat along her frame. "I can't feel him," he says, weary. "He's there, but he isn't. I thought it was the distance, but... What's going on? Does Megatron have him in some sort of stasis field?"

Skywarp shakes her helm and reluctantly sits up on her berth sized for three, the one she was eager to claim so she could rub it in Starscream's faceplate when he turned back up. "It's easier if you just see him," she says, and doesn't give any more warning before she teleports them away, warp drive a burning fist clenched around her spark.

The room they rematerialize in is small, dingy and cluttered. It's deep underground without even the relief of a window, the air pressure a heavy uneasy ache on her sensornet that wants her to be out in the open sky.

On a med slab in the center of the room lays Starscream. What's left of him, anyway. The Quintessons pried him apart, stripped plating and flayed wires, his frame reduced to a grotesque display of anatomy like something you'd find in Shockwave's lab, mid dissection. His wings are gone- she found one, in the wreckage of the Quintesson's ship where she found his frame, along with a few other scraps of his plating, but she doesn't have the skill to reattach it so it's propped up against the wall, a macabre gleam of white and red- his once-clawed digits reduced to stubs, thrusters hollowed.

Where his head should be is one of the Quintesson's helmets, so dark it seems to suck up all the light in the room, tendrils snaking into his exposed chassis, wrapping around his spark case. She doesn't know if his head is still under there at all, or if they took that as well.

"His spark's still intact," Skywarp tells a shell-shocked Thundercracker. She doesn't know if it's online because his absurd luck had held long enough for her to find his frame and stabilize the worst of his damage, or if this some sort of divine punishment.

"Did Megatron...?" Thundercracker says, after he's spent a long stretch of time absorbing the contents of the room. She's filled it with medical equipment, of course, but also a stockpile of things Starscream would like. His favorite waxes, a crate of rust sticks, data pads with his old research, a model from when he was building Megatron's fusion cannon. As if she can surround him with familiar things and draw him back out.

She looks up from checking the energon drip she has hooked into his system, and shakes her helm.

"Megatron doesn't know about this, about him," she says. She doesn't know what his reaction would be, and the way he's been acting lately, she isn't eager to find out. She has started thinking about that Autobot Perceptor, though, and wondering if it might be worth it to abduct him and make _him_ think about the problem, since he was the one who came up with the way to get the rest of them out of their Quintesson prison. She'd have to figure out a way to stop him from taking the chance to offline Starscream, though, and she doesn't know how to ensure that.

"Why did you save him?" Thundercracker asks, and the words come out of his vocalizer with a neutral tone but she flinches as if they'd been cannon fire. "He nearly offlined me. He tried to destroy the entire _universe_ , and us along with it."

"What else was I supposed to do?" Skywarp says, a thousand emotions flaring up to choke her co-processor, swirling sour and confusing through her circuitry. "He's our trine leader. He's _ours_." Her hand grasps spasmodically against her chest, as if she soothe the ache in her spark by clawing through all her layers of armor. "I hate him for what he's done. Of course I do. But I still love him, too."

You don't need love to form a trine. You don't even need to like your trinemates, though you're pretty much stuck with them the rest of your existence once the bond is formed so a certain level of compatibility is encouraged.

But Skywarp loves her trine, and always has. Not quite from the first glance, maybe, or in the cycles they were orbiting each other, still untethered by anything except mutual interest. But when she opened her spark to the both of them, merged on the deepest level possible, she agreed to forming the trine bond because her love for them felt like the first time she took flight, the horizon suddenly limitless.

Even when she hates Starscream so much she'd happily tear open his laser core to get him to stop being so- so everything that he is, a slagged up little glitch who can't be satisfied for a single astrocycle of existence, she can't help loving him. He belongs to her, to the both of them, just like she belongs to him and Thundercracker, and she won't let him slip away from facing the consequences of being owned like that.

Thundercracker shakes his helm. "I can't be here," he says. He's holding himself stiff, drawn-in, his wings an uncomfortable angle against his back.

"I'll show you the way out," she says, "In case you want to come back without me." And because her warp drive is already feeling strained, and she knows Thundercracker will fret if she makes even a small slip.

The way in and out, for anyone without the ability to teleport, is treacherous. She made certain of it. He's silent as she guides him through the maze of half-collapsed tunnels and decaying structures, until they're up in the air proper again.

"You hid him below Kaon," he says, hovering over the ruins of the city. The blue of his plating is smeared with ore dust, almost dark enough now to blend in with the night sky around them.

"Who expects to find a seeker down a mineshaft?" Skywarp replies. That was her main reasoning for choosing this place, but a part of her admits she thought Starscream might like the symbolism. This is the city where he met Megatron for the first time, after all, the place they were recruited when he was just a gladiator and they were eager to follow a leader demanding more of the world than the roles dictated to them.

She and Thundercracker don't speak on the flight back, and the silence filling the space they both instinctively leave open for a third who isn't there any more roars loud in her audials.

She's barely made it back to base before Astrotrain sends her a comm, a low-priority glyph message telling her he's free for the cycle. Probably he didn't even think she'd be online this early, the dawn just starting to brighten the sky and chase away a lingering chill.

Skywarp is not free; she has maneuvers to oversee, patrols to run, weapons to inspect, paperwork to do, a thousand tedious tasks demanding her attention. But she doesn't _care_ \- she hates being (Acting, just Acting dammit this is _not_ going to be her role forever) Air Commander, hates the responsibility of it, the constant reminders that she has the job because Starscream isn't functional enough to snatch back his rightful place. She'd thought having Thundercracker with her would make it all easier to bear, but in some ways his presence is making things worse.

::Meet at your workshop?:: she comms back.

::You're not supposed to know that exists:: Astrotrain says.

::As if I care what you're doing there:: she replies, a little too sharp. She activates her warp drive and it _hurts_ , the strain of using it without enough rest like an electro-sword shoved under her chest plates, but she arrives in one piece.

The workshop is finished now, all its walls intact and computer terminals humming softly. The main project looks like some kind of ray weapon, standing large and proud in the middle of the space despite its guts hanging exposed in a half-connected tangle. Skywarp spares it only a bored glance.

::I'm here now, might as well make sure I don't get into trouble:: she tells him, and starts counting the astrocycles.

If she focuses her sensors up on the open skylight above, she can detect the faint emissions from his unspace portal opening. More obvious is the sudden influx of heat and noise from his thrusters, the wash of air movement from his passage.

Astrotrain transforms as he falls, landing on his pedes inside the lab with a ground-shaking _thud_. "You shouldn't be here," he says, voice petulant.

"Are you gonna use that thing against Megatron?" she replies, and gestures to the ray or whatever it is as if there's any doubt what she's referring to. "Because if not, I don't care."

He hesitates, which is a bit weird- maybe he _is_ planning to take on their leader- but shakes his helm. "It's not for Megatron," he says.

"Alright then," Skywarp says, "Get over here and let me suck your spike." 

He doesn't hesitate over _that_ , she notes with mingled amusement and lust, just takes the few massive steps he needs to cross the workshop. "How... What size do you want me?" he asks.

She's tempted to tell him to stay just the size he is, looming and huge- Primus, she forgets sometimes just how _big_ his frame is when he's not in front of her sensors- but she really wants to fit him into her intake, not just lick a tiny patch. "Not your smallest," she says, remembering the last time they fragged in this workshop.

Astrotrain mass-shifts himself down, and she wonders idly if there's a way to make herself larger instead, since he doesn't seem to enjoy the experience. She's already expressing her full natural mass, of course, so maybe... some kind of reverse shrink ray? Ooh, she could have a lot of fun with something like that, but she doesn't get to dwell on the idea because Astrotrain is standing right in front of her now, one of his big hands tipping her helm up to look at him.

"Okay?" he asks.

"Perfect," she says, even if it remains to be seen whether she can actually stretch her intake around his spike at this size. He's still massive, broad wings casting a shadow over her as the sun rises to shine through the skylight, his codpiece nearly level with her helm.

Actually, she realizes as she presses forward, his modesty panel is exactly the right height for the tip of his spike to be perfectly level with her mouth once extended. She won't have to awkwardly bend over, how thoughtful.

"Open up," she says, wings quivering with anticipation. "Let me get you ready."

His panel clicks open, revealing the burnished head of his spike still nestled in its housing. Skywarp leans in and inhales the scent, hot metal and lubrication and the cheap wax he must use on his plating, and then braces her hands against his thighs.

He tastes even better, his spike twitching up into the very first brush of her glossa, and she hums happily. Most mecha prefer to delay opening their panels until their interface protocols give them the go-ahead, arrays primed and ready to go, but she likes the feeling of coaxing a spike out, or opening a valve on her digits. It's not something she gets to indulge in very often, even with her trine- Thundercracker just calls her impatient, and she's literally never caught Starscream totally unprepared.

Astrotrain, though, he takes longer to rev up and hasn't been scared off by her odd requests yet so far. She seals her lips over the head of his spike just barely protruding now, and instead of sucking only laps at him, relaxing her intake as much as she can while her glossa swipes over every nanometer of hot, smooth metal.

He lets out an appreciative noise, digits stroking against her helm. His spike extends slowly, straight into her mouth, and it's so large she can feel her lips straining to handle the girth, her mandible pushed down past its normal range with a cheery ping to her HUD warning her of possible dislocation.

She should pull off, tell him to mass-shift a bit more, and continue in greater comfort. But Skywarp only starts swallowing around him, coaxing his spike down into her gullet tubing. The strain is immense, his spike heavy and hard, utterly unyielding. Instead it's her frame which has to accommodate, cables pushed out of alignment, the mesh of her throat stretching as he slides deeper down her gullet.

She barely has room to move her glossa, oral lubricant building up in messy drips because there's no space for her to swallow it properly.

Above her Astrotrain says something, asks if she's okay or maybe praises her.

She hums and just rests there for a moment, his spike fully extended now and radiating heat, shivers of charge sparking against her sensors. Slowly she draws back, lips catching on each ridge and dip along his length. There's a smear of energon mixed with her oral fluids, the corners of her mouth stinging like the flexible alloy of her faceplate might have torn, but not enough for her to worry.

She sucks him back down, frame putting up more of a fight now that she can _see_ exactly how large his spike is, and she has to work herself in short back and forth bobs to make it to the base again.

He moans, and she feels the cabling in his thighs tense and strain against the urge to move. She wishes he would, loves it when her berthpartners lose control and just thrust, fill her up so all she can do is take it, but that would probably tip this size mismatch from 'really reckless' to 'outright stupid'.

Instead Skywarp keeps this up as long as she can, sucking and licking as she slides her intake up and down his spike. His stamina is really annoying for once, because she wants him to overload down her gullet, wants his transfluid to crackle against her oral sensors and spill messy from her lips- but before that can happen the ache from her over-extended mandible and stretched throat force her to pull off him.

She works her jaw gingerly, but it seems she hasn't quite dislocated the main joint. Yay, she's so far avoided another awkward conversation with the medics.

Astrotrain rubs at one of her tower vents, and just like that she's aware of the charge flowing through her frame, the straining need for more contact than just a spike in her intake.

Her optics don't seem to quite want to focus, the feed dim and hazy, but those med slabs are easy to spot, still where they were last time. She grabs his hand off her shoulder and tugs, not trusting her vocalizer to output anything intelligible until it's had time to reset.

He follows easily and Skywarp revels in the power she feels, leading a huge mech like him around at her whims. She clambers up onto the slab and then, seeing the level at which his spike rests, flips herself to face away from him and braces her frame up on forearms and knees.

Her valve cover transforms away and she shudders at even that little bit of stimulation.

Astrotrain doesn't hesitate at the silent invitation. He swipes a digit against her dripping opening, pushes inside in a move that would be rough if she wasn't already so revved up that the slide is effortless, her valve twitching eagerly against his touch.

"Come on," she says, vocalizer a hoarse rasp.

He grunts, and steps between her kneeling legs. His spike presses against her valve, solid and heavy, and she in-vents sharply.

When he actually slides inside of her, blunt pressure forcing her valve to stretch and strain around the girth of his spike, Skywarp whimpers and squirms and tries to get him deeper, even after she feels his spike pressing her ceiling nodes and his inguinal plating crashing against her aft.

"Hard," she manages to force out of her vocalizer, "Hard as you can."

He doesn't comply at first, hips rocking and grinding more than thrusting, and she grits her denta because she wants him to frag her so hard it hurts, wants to be full of him with no room left for anything else.

"Come on," she snarls, "You can do better."

Astrotrain picks up the pace slowly but inexorably, until his spike is a battering ram with all his weight behind it- a fraction of his true weight, his true force, and she shivers and moans to remember him fragging her at his full size, subspace straining around him like he was somehow filling up all the gaps between her very particles- and she has to scramble to brace herself on the surface of the med slab.

She lets herself collapse more, pushing her aft up into steadying the grip of his hands while her front scrapes against the slab, helm lolling with every thrust. It feels good, having him move so big and deep inside of her, the punishing slam each time he bottoms out, and more than that it feels _enough_.

Overloading isn't the point for her this time- she's not shy about demanding pleasure, wringing as much from ever encounter as she can get- but right now she just wants to be used, filled up and taken, taken away from the rest of her existence where no matter what she does it's never quite enough.

But it is enough for her to kneel here, taking Astrotrain's spike. It's enough that her frame can handle the stretch, the pressure, the charge burning hot against her plating everywhere he touches her.

He slows, and she sobs out a wave of static.

"You gonna overload for me?" he asks, chest rumbling against her wings as he bends down to whisper in her audial.

Skywarp tries to shake her helm, but can only twitch in jerks, unsteady. This is enough, she wants to tell him, but her vocalizer only clicks uselessly.

His intake is soft against the side of her helm when he kisses her, and she strains her neck swivels to meet his lips.

One of his hands lets go from where he's been holding her hips and drops down to where he's speared inside of her. He brushes against her node and she spasms, unsure if she wants to get away or not, but she can't move because she's full of him and she can't speak because she's full of him, and when he rubs in time with the movement of his hips the overload carries her away.

He grinds against her with deep satisfied noises, his weight pinning her in place, and to her horror Skywarp sobs like it's being pulled from her spark, optical fluid welling up in a stinging rush.

She buries her faceplate against the slab, tucking herself under vent and arm, shaking and raw.

Astrotrain starts to pull out of her, pull away- everything between her thighs is wet, a lake of transfluid, so he must have overloaded- but she reaches out blindly and grabs for him. He pauses, so she tugs as best she can at this angle and then he moves to cover her again, bearing her down flat against the slab when her legs collapse.

He doesn't say anything, the loudest sound in the workshop his cooling fans as they slowly decrease to a low hum. He's much warmer than Thundercracker, heavier, the angles of his chest not matching up the same against her back. But it still feels comforting to have someone solid grounding her, keeping her from flying away.

After a while the optical leaking is dried up, and her emotional co-processor isn't swamping her circuits with feelings she can't even name, and the only thing left is to deal with the mortification of whatever Astrotrain is going to say about any of it.

She squirms and elbows his chest, and he obligingly stops squashing her.

"Are you... okay?" he asks, his voice low like he's afraid of provoking her. Which is kind of funny, since she's pretty sure most people aren't scared of mecha that cry and demand to be held after interfacing. Maybe he's worried it'll rub off on him.

"Fine," she says, her strained vocalizer rendering it a hoarse rasp. She sits up on the med slab, shaking out her wings and pretending there aren't any tell-tale streaks running down her faceplate.

She hears him move around behind her, pedes ringing against the floor as he walks away. She freezes in place, wings hiked up so high and defensive the hinges strain with the urge to just transform, spark sinking slowly down into the pit of her fuel tank like a dying star. Because of course this is too much for a casual frag, they were having fun together and now she's gone and made it weird.

Before she can get worked up enough to haul her sore frame away he returns, and takes one massive step around the slab to offer her a rag dipped in a bit of solvent.

Oh, Skywarp thinks, spiralling thought process abruptly knocked off course. "Thanks," she says, and cleans herself up.

She doesn't really want to dart off, doesn't want to return to base and her duties, or to Thundercracker when she doesn't know how to fix the tangled remains of their trine, doesn't want to be alone. But she can't think of a reason to stay. Probably Astrotrain doesn't want a round two after that.

"I've got the whole cycle off," he says, and she remembers that it's still early, it only feels late to her because she flew all last night instead of recharging. "Did you want to fly?"

She huffs a laugh before she can stop herself, because while as a seeker she'll always crave the open sky, she's too tired to want to fly for fun. But she looks at him, all that towering bulk, the stiff broad wings and heavy engines, and says, "You're meant for space flight, right?" Because he can fly within the atmosphere, obviously, but it's probably as much a strain on him as flying between the planets would be on her.

He nods, frame relaxing an almost unnoticeable amount, only really visible because there's so _much_ of him to telegraph his every movement. "Not called _Astro_ train for nothing," he tells her. There's a tiny bit of pride in his voice, satisfaction of an alt-mode that fits one's spark.

The take-off is smooth, but she can feel the powerful thrumming of his engines and knows it's far from easy, the planet straining to keep them. Then they're out, beyond the atmosphere, beyond the gravity well, Cybertron dwindling to an insignificant silvery orb far below.

"Can you cut the artificial gravity?" Skywarp asks, and in answer the floor falls away from her.

She grins, because that's always been her favorite part of space and yet the one she gets to experience the least often. Usually she either has to sabotage the starship she's traveling in, or shoot herself out an airlock, because everyone else always complains that they can't get anything done when the world seems to be in constant free-fall.

Astrotrain's holo-avatar smirks back at her, the gravity flickering back on quickly, strong enough to slam her to the floor in an ungraceful heap and then off again before she can recover.

"Aft," she says, and smacks her hand against his plating, but she's still smiling. She bounces from floor to wall to ceiling, enjoying the novelty of flight without any actual flight.

"You're not dizzy?" he asks, holo-avatar tracking her movements as if that's actually where his optical feed is centered. She wonders if he puts effort into the illusion for himself, or to remind his passengers he's still a mech despite transporting them.

"Nah," she says, barrel-rolling despite being in root mode, and belatedly realizes she's miscalculated and is about to crash into his seats. She flails, and grabs for the back of one seat only for it to shoot away from her grasp, leaving her to keep drifting. "Seekers don't get dizzy, anyway."

Not strictly speaking true, but it's pretty standard to disable that sort of sensory feedback. Otherwise you'd constantly be in danger of an embarrassing reaction just because you wanted to show off a little, and how annoying would _that_ be?

He's doing his own spins and twirls, floating in the space between Cybertron and its moons. The sun casts unfiltered light in through Astrotrain's windows when he drifts in that direction, the stars shine out of the black when he turns away.

"It looks so small from up here," Skywarp says, optics fixing on the sight of their planet spinning away below (above, below, topsy-turvy as they rotate around an untethered axis), gleaming silver and faint energon blue. If she zooms her optical feed to its maximum, she can see the black marks from where the massive Quintesson mothership fell, scars charred into the very metal of Cybertron.

He hums, the noise emanating from his form all around her. Everything must look pretty small to him all the time, she thinks, and lays a hand against his dashboard.

She should check her comm, and get back to base to handle her duties like a good Decepticon. She should at least let Astrotrain go off and spend his cycle off doing something better than floating around in space with his casual fragpartner who cried on him, just because she likes the feeling of zero-g.

But Skywarp is selfish. When she wants something she aims for it, grabs and doesn't let go. She shutters her optics and pushes against his dash, throwing herself into a tight spiral, sensors telling her she's free-falling without the fall. It's restful out here.


End file.
